This is the highly informal blog of the GAME-department. We use it mostly to document the things we do outside of running one of the worlds strongest game educations. For information about our education, programs and courses, check the official site at Uppsala University.

Our local computer shop arranges an IT exhibition every year. For 2017 they rechristened it “Digitala Gotland” and moved down to Wisby Strand – literally across the street from campus. So they reached out and invited us to their show floor and scene program, which were happy to avail ourselves off. 🙂

A few of our students put up three new games for the public to try out, while Adam Mayes spoke, twice, about the promising research done on using games as therapy and a tool for social work.

This is the fifth symposium on digital games hosted by the Swedish Museum of Science and Technology. This time we were discussing game addiction / problematic gaming. Our new colleague Patrick Prax​ shared his research taking a holistic approach to treatment.

“Rather than taking games away, we need to add life back.”

From the program:

More people than ever before are playing digital games. For many it is just an enjoyable leisure activity but games and gaming are also associated with concerns about gaming addiction, violent content and problematic representation as well as hate speech and harassment among players.

The Swedish Media Council report on youth media use (2012) showed that digital games was the media category young people felt most concerned about and was most favorable about age limits for. It was also the media category they felt adults were least interested in.

Is there such a thing as digital gaming addiction and if so, how common is it? Are the gamers affected by violent content and values expressed in games? What are the judicial aspects of harassment in online games? Is the talk of “problematic gaming” just a part of a moral panic? These are some of the questions that will be discussed by our invited speakers at this symposium.

Every year, the best and brightest of the game industry gather in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference (GDC). As part of the 5 day event the organizers also host alt.ctrl.GDC – an on-site showcase of unique games built around alternative control schemes and interactions. Or in their own words: “a chance to play some of the most inventive and innovative games around using unique, one-of-a-kind controllers.”

This year, two of our student teams will be present! Among the only 20 finalists chosen, our first-year teams Cryptogram and Zombie Crawler both made the cut and thus will be travelling to the US this spring and exhibit their games alongside a long time friend of the department; developer, all round creative, and now teacher – Jerry Belich.

This is a fantastic opportunity for our students to present their games on an international stage, and we’re incredibly proud and happy that they can represent the education in San Francisco.

As you know, we’ve recently made a substantial upgrade to our motion capture equipment. We’ve swapped out all the tech and swapped out the studio – we moved it from our previous spot at the Baltic Art Center, to the university’s own F-building – ie: the GAME house, right next to the small boat harbor in Visby.

Anyway – a week ago Nataska sent out a call for students to come help exercise the system, and she put together this little video of her first impressions:

(Thank you: Eva, Lucas and Svante for putting on the suits and helping out!)

In addition to this recording setup we’ve also got two sets of TrackIR so our students can experiment with simpler head tracking in their games.

We have moved and upgraded our old motion capture equipment! The new hotness consists of 16 brand new OptiTrack Prime13 cameras, new software, the works! And now we need test subjects, hehe.

So Finn Engström and Nataska have been installing the new motion capture cameras this week and they’re happy to report they did a successful test with an actor today and it has all been smooth sailing so far 🙂

Now we want to see just how good our new system is, and that means we need actors: we need 3 volunteers to help us Monday 21st with a bit of light acting for about 1-2h, 10am at F20. Any takers?